


Where the Magic Happens

by Nihilistic_Janitor



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Byleth loves food, F/F, Female My Unit | Byleth, Slow Burn, byleth lives in the woods cause the dursleys are terrible, remembers skills from her previous life but not specifics, sothis and tom are the best parents yccmv
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24677146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihilistic_Janitor/pseuds/Nihilistic_Janitor
Summary: In which Byleth Potter, the quiet girl who lives in the woods with her imaginary friends Sothis and Tom, gets a letter inviting her to a school for wizards and witches. More importantly, according to Tom, that school has a lake to fish in.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Tom Riddle | Voldemort & Sothis (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 192





	1. Chapter 1

My tree was very nice.

It was big and round, and a lightning strike had hollowed a lot of it out, and I'd hollowed out the rest. I'd made a little roof inside out of deer hide, to keep the rain out, and a door using the leftovers, and I had other animal furs that kept me warm when the weather got cold. A whole nest of them, even, and it was comfortable to sleep in even when it wasn't cold. 

I had a little bow and arrow that I used to hunt that I'd made myself, and a large sharpened branch that I used as a spear, and a fishing pole that was my treasure, and a broken fishing pole that used to be my treasure and still was even though it had broken and I'd had to make a new one. I also had my favorite weapon, a wooden sword that I'd painstakingly carved over two or three or something years. It was the least useful of them all, but I still loved it, and every day after I'd finished hunting and fishing and making a fire in my fire-pit and smoking my spare meat and cooking and gathering berries and roots and things I would go out in front of my tree and practice with it.

I had friends, too. There was a snake who lived in a tree stump past the willow and the pond who didn't have a name and didn't want one but I liked talking to her. There was the robin that nested in my tree and raised her babies and sometimes I had to help the little robin family with injuries or food but I liked them a lot so it was okay. And I had two friends that were people, but they were both kind of imaginary and didn't like each other much.

One was named Tom, and the other was named Sothis.

Sothis looked a little older than me but she said she was a lot older than me. She had green hair and fancy clothes and said she'd been my friend for a very very long time, all the way from back when I learned how to use a sword and make a bow and skin a rabbit with a sharp rock, which was before I was born and was a different person, but Sothis said I wasn't that different now. She liked the robins. She was a little mean sometimes, but mostly nice, and liked to wander around or nap or remind me of things I didn't remember to do.

Tom was an adult, and he said he wasn't my friend at all, but he was my friend, he was just stubborn. He got mad at Sothis a lot, and also he got mad for no reason a lot, but he really liked when I showed him the proper way to skin things or gut fish or make swords, and he liked the snake that lived in the tree stump. I liked showing him things, too, and it made me happy when it seemed like he understood. Sometimes he'd imagine a sword for himself, a real metal sword, and he'd follow along with me when I practiced with my wooden one.

I used to have people that called themselves my family, but the one thing Sothis and Tom both agreed on was that they weren't really my family, because they were always mean. That was why I lived in the woods instead. I knew how to live in the woods, and Sothis didn't want me to stay with those people, and Tom said curses at them that weren't the same as the curses they said at me but he assured me that it was definitely cursing. I knew that cursing was bad. Tom was an adult, though, so it was okay if he cursed.

And then one day I had a letter.

On the front it said, "Byleth Potter," so I knew it was for me, and under that it said "The Lightning-Struck Elm," which was where I lived even though I hadn't known it was an Elm. I showed it to Sothis, who was worried, and to Tom, who seemed excited, and they started arguing as I opened it up and read what it said inside about a school called Hogwarts.

"She doesn't need to go to school!" Sothis yelled at Tom.

"So you'd rather she sit alone in the woods? She could be incredibly powerful, nearly as powerful as I was." Tom didn't yell, but he used the voice he used when talking to very stupid things. He used that voice a lot when he talked to my not-family, but they didn't hear him, because he was imaginary.

I liked school. Even when I went to school with my not-cousin who was mean to me, I liked school. People called me a lot of names, but it was okay because there were a lot of books and things to do and the teachers answered a lot of my questions about things. I'd tried to keep going after I'd stopped living with her not-family, but everyone had given me really strange looks when I forgot to wash the blood off my hands from making myself dinner the night before, and Tom and Sothis told me I didn't need to go anymore.

Tom had never wanted me to go, anyway, but it was the two of them being in agreement that was the important thing. Besides, it gave me more time to make my sword, and fish, and hunt. Mostly fish. I liked fishing.

I interrupted their fight because they fought a lot anyway, so they could wait for a moment. "Is there a place where I can fish at Hogwarts?"

They both turned to me, and Sothis was going to say something, but before she could Tom said, "There's a lake on the grounds."

I said, "I'll go."

Sothis spluttered. Tom said he'd show me where to get my school supplies. I took a piece of charcoal and wrote "Okay," on the envelope and put it on the tree, so whoever put it in front of the tree could find it again and take it back.

I followed Tom out of the woods. I brought my wooden sword, just in case.


	2. Chapter 2

Tom brought me to a pub. Sothis huffed that this seemed like a strange place to buy school supplies. Tom shot back that Sothis didn't know the first thing about the magical world. Sothis puffed herself up and stood on her tiptoes and poked him in the chest and lectured him about how she invented magic. I went into the pub.

The man behind the counter noticed me right away as I went in. I could see him taking in the homemade animal hide tunic I'd made when my other clothes had finally fallen apart, and my blue hair, and the wooden sword clacking against the ground at my hip. That was normal, though. A lot of people looked at me like that when I was walking to the pub.

But then his eyes travelled to my forehead, where my mystery scar was, and his eyes widened and he made his way over to me. "Byleth Potter! The Girl-Who-Lived finally shows her face!" he said, and began to say a lot of things after that about someone who shouldn't be named and being a hero and all sorts of things that I didn't really understand. Everyone else in the pub did, though, and soon I was surrounded by people trying to talk to me and ask me questions.

"What are you wearing? What happened to your robes?"

"I made this. My old clothes fell apart."

"Why do you have a sword?"

"I like swords."

"Come on, smile for me!"

I didn't answer that one, because it wasn't a question.

"Where have you been all this time? I can't believe I didn't catch sight of you sooner!"

"The woods."

That answer took a few people aback, and I took the opportunity to slip through the impromptu crowd for the back of the pub where Tom said the entrance was. A few people followed behind me, and when I came to the wall and wondered how to open it like Tom said to do, one of the people took out a small wooden stick and tapped it against the stones and the wall opened up.

"Thank you," I said, because it was good to be polite, and then I walked into the Alley.

Tom and Sothis caught up to me by this point. Sothis was looking around curiously. I asked Tom where I should get money, and that I'm good at fighting, so could I be a mercenary maybe? Tom gave me a look that said 'shut up and let the adult handle this' and then he pointed me to a large bank at the end of the Alley and helped me get money from the people inside who he called goblins. There was a lot of gold in that bank that the people Tom called goblins said was mine, which I thought was strange because I didn't remember doing anything to make this much gold. Everyone else thought it was normal, though. 

The person who showed me the vault was named Griphook, and I asked him how much school supplies were, and he smiled at me and told me he'd be happy to help for a fee, and I told him okay and just handed him a handful of gold coins because he said it would make him happy, and Tom gave me a really weird look, and Griphook gave me a weird look too but he smiled anyway and helped me pick out how much money I needed.

Tom said I needed a wand, but Sothis told him I needed new clothes first. It took Tom about fifty seconds of staring at little blood spatters I hadn't managed to wash out of my outfit to agree. He pointed out a place called Madam Malkin's just a little ways back up the Alley. I figured it would be nice to have the same kind of clothes everyone else in the Alley did, so I went.

The shop was small, or else it was big but so crowded with clothes that it felt small, and there was a short lady and a blonde lady arguing about materials a little ways in, and there was a pretty girl about my age sitting in a chair by the window. She had white hair and purple eyes and was looking at me with those purple eyes stretched all the way open. So, to make her feel better about whatever it was about me that was putting her off, I said, "You're very pretty," because it was true and also a nice thing to say, and then I sat down in the chair next to her.

She stared at me more, and then she asked, "What are you wearing?"

"Clothes. I made them when my old ones fell apart." She didn't seem to know what to make of that, even though I thought I was very clear, so I clarified. "They're mostly made of deer hide."

Slowly, the girl blinked at me. Her eyes went to my wooden sword, and then traveled over my clothes, pausing for a long moment on the blood spatters even though they were small and just rabbit blood, and then they traveled up to my face, and then to the scar on my forehead. She asked, "Are...are you Byleth Potter?"

"Yes. What's your name?"

"Edelgard Malfoy," she said. And then she stood up, walked over to the blonde lady, tugged on her robes, and whispered something that made both women turn to look at me.

A few minutes later, Edelgard and the blonde lady had left. I was being ushered out of the shop in a new set of robes, spare sets bundled in my arms, and my old clothes had mysteriously vanished. There had been a lot of gasps and tutting and muttering on Madam Malkin's part, and when I'd asked her how much to pay her she'd only said, "Oh, dearie..." and refused to take any money at all. I was very confused by this, but Tom told me to get a move on, so I did.

Tom said I needed a wand next, now that I wasn’t covered in rabbit blood. I told him I wasn’t covered in it, I always made sure to wash as much of it out as I could. Tom didn’t respond to that, and instead pointed out a shop called Ollivander’s.

The shop was dusty on the inside, and kind of gloomy, and smelled a little bit like resin and a little bit like ozone. There was an old man puttering about inside, muttering to himself and moving boxes from this shelf to that shelf, but he quickly put down the boxes he was holding and came over to me.

He said a lot of things about how important wands were and how different wands were and what wands my parents used and a good deal more things, but it was hard to pay attention with Sothis stomping around and peering at boxes and generally seething.

“Wands! Needing a wand to do magic, I’ve never heard something so ridiculous. Magic is about the principles, the formulas, the circles, the beliefs, not about holding a fancy stick!”

“No, no...ah, how about this one?” Ollivander put a new wand into my hand. I waved it around, pretending it was like my sword, and it sparkled, and Ollivander told me that was my wand.

“Elm and phoenix feather, twelve inches, rather bendy,” he called it.

“I live in an elm tree,” I said.

He said something about the wand being good at something-or-other but I wasn’t paying attention to him because the designs carved into the wand were very nice looking. Like if tree bark came in perfectly straight lines and also you could see dragons in the bark if you screwed up your eyes right.

Ollivander stopped and said, “Ah, interested in the woodwork? I do my best to bring out the natural artistry hidden in the wood when making these wands. Every tree has its own personality, after all.”

I nodded. “It took me a while to find the right wood for my sword.”

Ollivander’s eyes traveled to my waist, seemingly for the first time. “Ah! A simple, sturdy design. I must admit, if wandmaking weren’t my calling, woodwork would surely be it.”

“Could you show me sometime?”

Ollivander coughed. “Sadly, the secrets of wandlore are to be passed down only from master to apprentice. Maybe, when you graduate Hogwarts, I could see if you have the gift.”

I nodded and left the shop. Tom said something dismissive about batty old codgers. Sothis whacked him on the back of the head and told him to respect his elders. Tom sneered at her. Sothis huffed. I looked at the list and went off to buy the rest of my school supplies.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth rides a train, and makes a friend.

I was very happy as I carried the trunk full of school supplies over to my tree. School seemed interesting and exciting, and my new clothes felt warm, and it would be a lot less work to survive winter. And even though Sothis still muttered about wands being completely unnecessary, my wand felt very nice in my hand. Like my fishing rod, or my sword, or my old fishing rod that had broken in half.

I’d gotten a trunk which was supposed to be weather-proof, so I put my stores of meat and spare hide and all the things that I didn’t want to get rained on in it, right next to the cauldron and the gloves and the potions kit and the books and everything. 

My tree felt a little empty after that, so I ate dinner and picked some flowers and talked to the robins and told the snake that I’d be leaving for the winter. The snake asked if I was secretly a bird all this time. I told the snake I was fairly sure I wasn’t a bird, because I didn’t have feathers and I couldn’t fly. The snake laughed. Her laugh was very nice, and it made me smile, and she told me to take care of myself and she’d take care of my nest while I was gone. I told her I’d make an extra nice alcove in it for her.

There was still plenty of time until school started, though. I fished a lot. It was relaxing, pulling the fish out of the water, gutting them with my little stone knife, making a fire to cook them with. And it ended with food, which made it even better.

I marked the days on the inside of my tree, because Sothis said I’d definitely lose track otherwise. A week before I was supposed to go to the station, a letter came to my tree with a ticket inside it.

I didn’t realize until the day when I had to leave that I didn’t know how to get to King’s Cross Station. I asked Tom and Sothis, but Sothis didn’t know and Tom looked at me like I was stupid, which I told him was a very rude response. He went off to sulk, except he didn’t call it sulking, he called it communing with the Dark Arts or something. Sothis decided to take a nap.

I put on my fancy new uniform, made sure all my things were packed and my wooden sword was safely on my hip, hoisted my chest up onto my shoulder, and went into town to ask for directions.

There weren’t very many people out, but there was one lady who looked nice. She had her hair in a pretty bun and was wearing a green cardigan the color of healthy leaves. I tugged on her sleeve and waited for her to turn around.

“How do you get to King’s Cross Station?”

The lady turned to look at me and her face turned into that mild concerned look Madam Malkin gave me. She asked, “Sweetie, where are your parents?”

“They’re dead.” People wanted to talk about my parents a lot, but I didn’t understand why she thought it was important right now. “I need to get to the station to go to school, but I don’t know where it is.”

“I can give you a ride, don’t worry. Here, let me take your trunk.” She plucked it out of my hands and gave me a kind smile. “I’m parked right over here. My name is Rhea. What’s your name?”

“Byleth,” I said. Her car was big and had worn-out seats and there was a baby seat in the back. She put my trunk in the boot. I got in the backseat.

I looked out the window as she drove, trying to remember the way to the Station. I didn’t want to get lost a second time, after all. Rhea asked me, “So, who are you living with? Is there a reason they couldn’t take you today?”

“A family of robins and a nice snake and two imaginary friends,” I said.

Her eyes flicked to me in the rearview mirror. “Where do you live, then?”

“I have a nice tree in the woods. I found out it was an elm recently. It’s very warm in the winter,” I said.

The light ahead of us turned red and Rhea had to hit the brakes suddenly because she was looking at me and not the road. I said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t distract you while you’re driving.”

“You’re fine, I was a little surprised, that’s all.” Rhea took another quick look at me in the rearview mirror. “What’s this school you’re going to?”

“It’s called Hogwarts. It’s a boarding school. I heard there’s lots of food and a lake I can fish in. My parents apparently signed me up for it before they died.”

“Ah,” Rhea said. “Well, we’re here.”

There were lots of people at King’s Cross Station. Including Tom, who had finished sulking and was standing on the kerb, hissing, “Come on, leave this woman behind and let’s get on the train already before you’re late!”

As I got out and Rhea got my trunk for me, she took me aside. “Sweetie, I know we just met, but if you ever need a place to stay, you can call me, okay?” She reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad and a handful of change, putting the change in my hands and writing down an address, a phone number, and the name Rhea Nabatean.

I put them carefully in my trunk. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll probably be fine though. I’m really good at living in the woods.”

She gave me a worried look. I said bye to her and picked up my trunk and followed Tom to the platform.

“The platform is right through this wall,” Tom said.

“Do I have to open it like the other wall?” I asked.

“No, just walk through,” Tom said. “And do it quick! The sooner we get to Hogwarts the sooner I can show you everything.”

“You sound excited,” I said. “I’m glad. I don’t see you excited much.”

“Just go!” he said, and made a shooing motion with his hands. As I walked through the wall. I could hear him muttering. “If I’d known immortality meant having to babysit a brat for the rest of my existence I would have thought twice about it.”

The platform was somehow even busier than the rest of the station. There were people in robes everywhere, herding children along towards the train. I could see the pretty white-haired girl standing like a soldier at attention while her parents talked to her, and a boy with sky-blue hair yelling and jumping excitedly while dragging another, sleepier boy around, and a tall boy with dark swoopy hair lecturing another boy about something, and a whole bunch of other kids besides, but Tom was getting impatient and anything that could make Tom impatient had to be interesting, so I went on board the train. 

There weren’t a lot of other people aboard yet, so I picked an empty compartment and put my trunk up top and got out one of my textbooks and started poking through it. It was about magical plants, but I thought I recognized some of them from my forest, so I wanted to double check and see if there was magic I could do at home.

Outside, the platform gradually emptied, and the sounds of people walking around and picking their own compartments filled up the train. Occasionally, people would look into my compartment and whisper to each other, but they wouldn’t come in. I didn’t know what that was about, so I focused on reading. Sothis, bored with napping, read over my shoulder. Tom tried desperately to not look ecstatic being on the train.

I was reading about the protective properties of dill when the door to my compartment was slammed open by a very small girl. She looked like she was a year younger than I was, maybe more, and she had a very angry expression and teary eyes, and she had pretty white hair like Edelgard’s.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to kick me out for being a baby like all those other jerks?” She sounded angry, but also upset. I scooched over on my seat to make room for her. 

She made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a sniffle, waved her wand, and then cursed as her trunk flew up, crashed into her back, and sent her sprawling. I put her trunk up top with one hand and helped her up with the other. She didn’t say thanks, but she seemed embarrassed, so I forgave her.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, because it was always nice to meet someone new. She was being a little mean, but she also seemed very unhappy, and whenever Tom or Sothis were unhappy they got mean. Mostly to each other, though once Tom tricked me into tripping over a rock and landing in the river while it was really cold. He thought it was funny, and I thought it was a nice swim even if it was unexpected, but Sothis scolded him for it.

She glared at me and sat down on the opposite side of the compartment. It took a few moments of her staring out the window and me wondering if I should go back to my book before she finally said, “I’m Lysithea Longbottom.”

“I’m Byleth Potter,” I said.

“If you’re expecting me to fall all over myself praising you for defeating the Dark Lord, you’re going to be disappointed,” Lysithea said. “Whatever happened that night, the story of a baby defeating You-Know-Who is pure lunacy, and I’m hardly going to worship you over it.”

“Okay,” I said, because it was.

“You were fed up with worship in your last life,” Sothis chuckled to herself. “Two lifetimes in a row is just bad luck.”

Tom rolled his eyes.

Lyshithea opened her mouth to elaborate, raising one finger in preparation. Then she processed what I’d said, and put her finger back down again. “Well, so long as we’re in agreement.”

The train started to move. I nodded and picked up my book. Lysithea immediately scooted over next to me to peer at it.

“ _ One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi _ ? You’re really reading that? You know most of the textbooks they ask you to bring are utter rubbish,” she said.

I cocked my head curiously.

“Yes, it’s alright as a basic primer to Herbology, gets you vaguely acquainted with a wide variety of species, but it lacks so many of the important details that really make or break raising them, to say nothing of trying to identify them in the wild!”

“What do you reccomend?” I asked.

This was a good question, because Lysithea gave me a lengthy run-down on the best books in the Hogwarts library as told to her by her grandmother. I took lots of notes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Byleth meets some more friends, and touches a hand, some hair, and a lot of food, in that order.

Lysithea was in the middle of dissecting our Defense textbook when there was a knock on our compartment door. I answered it, because I didn’t want to be rude.

On the other side was Edelgard, whose hair was very pretty and silky and I almost reached out and touched it, and standing on either side of her were two boys. One was smiling and bouncing on the tips of his toes and had orange hair, and the other was tall and scowly and made me think of Tom, if Tom was a kid and also not imaginary.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Edelgard said. “But I wanted to talk to you before we arrived at Hogwarts.”

“Okay,” I said, because it was.

“This is my friend Hubert Goyle,” she said, gesturing to Young Tom, “and—”

The orange-haired boy stepped forward, cutting her off. “Ferdinand Crabbe, at your service! My family has served as business advisors and allies to the Malfoys for as long as anyone can recall, and I am pleased and humbled to make the acquaintance of the great Byleth Potter herself—”

He said more things after that, but they all mostly seemed to be the same as the things he already said, so I invited them into the compartment to sit down. Lysithea introduced herself, and Ferdinand had a lot of nice things to say to her as well. Edelgard sat next to me as they talked, and while she looked very fancy and sat very straight her hands twisted around each other. Her gloves were pretty and the same color as her hair.

“I wanted to apologize for leaving so suddenly at Madam Malkin’s. I was preoccupied with other matters, and was rather taken aback by...er, no, I mean I wasn’t prepared for meeting you,” Edelgard said.

“That’s alright,” I said, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what she was apologizing for. Sothis often told me it was best to just accept apologies.

“My point is that I wanted to speak to you about Hogwarts. I’m curious to hear your thoughts, especially considering you seemed to be leading a very different life than I would have thought the savior of the wizarding world would have.”

“I’m excited to fish in the lake,” I said. “And I heard the food was good.”

Edelgard blinked at me. “I meant more along the lines of which House you were thinking of joining, and perhaps what you expected of the staff or the curriculum.”

“Lysithea says most of the textbooks are rubbish, and my house is an elm tree that was struck by lightning.”

Edelgard’s mouth opened, and closed, and Hubert took the opportunity to give me a long cold look and say, “What my lady means is which of the four Houses of Hogwarts would you like to join? There are Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, each with its own distinct set of values.”

“Slytherin?” I asked. “Does that have to do with snakes? I like snakes.”

Edelgard and Hubert shared a look. Hubert’s look in particular was the same as the look Tom got when he thought Sothis or I were being idiots. 

“Anyway,” Edelgard said, looking back at me. “I hope that we can be friends in the coming school year. I should return to my compartment and change into my school robes, but it was nice talking to you.”

“Nice talking to you too,” I said, even though I was mostly just confused.

The three of them left, Edelgard dragging Ferdinand along by the arm away from a now-angry Lysithea. I waved goodbye to them. Lysithea didn’t.

More train riding happened after that, and then we arrived. A very large man gave me in particular a big smile and a pat on the head and led all of the first years to a bunch of boats. He announced that his name was Hagrid and his voice was as big as he was and he had twigs in his beard and I decided I loved him.

“I cannot believe Dumbledore has kept that ridiculous oaf around.” Tom grumbled. “I was doing everyone, him included, a favor when I got him expelled.”

“Tom, it’s too late,” Sothis said.

“What do you mean it’s too late?” Tom said.

I grabbed Hagrid’s big, dirt-stained hand with both of my small, also dirt-stained hands. “Can I ride with you?”

Hagrid beamed. Tom sputtered. Sothis sighed and said, “Honestly, Tom, is this really a surprise? I knew the moment I saw this ‘Hagrid’ that Byleth would be sticking to him like glue.”

“One moment, I need to review the alchemical formula for glue solvent,” Tom grumbled.

I ran over to Lysithea, who hadn’t found a group herself yet, and grabbed her by the hands. “Lysithea, let’s go ride in Hagrid’s boat.” I said.

Lysithea’s eyes traveled over Hagrid, and then looked at me, and then she said, “Um, alright.” 

In a few minutes I was sitting in Hagrid’s lap as he rowed and Lysithea was watching the water from the front of the rowboat and Hagrid smelled like smoke and meat and herbs and dog. There were shadows of fish under the water of the lake, and a big castle all lit up that was apparently Hogwarts, and I could hear other first-years talking in other boats.

“You grew so much,” Hagrid said. “I remember you being so small you fit in my hand.”

I looked up at Hagrid. He was looking off into the distance like he was remembering something. 

“I’m still small,” I said. “Not that small, but I’ll still get a lot bigger.”

Hagrid chuckled and kept rowing. I plucked a twig out of his beard and started stripping the bark off of it. The castle grew closer, but I felt like if I just stayed out on the lake for the rest of school I’d be plenty happy.

Lysithea wouldn’t be happy, though. It seemed like she was really excited about the classrooms and the learning and the professors, even if she wasn’t excited about the books, and about telling me about those things. That’s why, when we arrived at the other bank, I got off with everyone else and lined up to go into the school.

There was a ceiling full of stars that I thought was very pretty, and a bunch of ghosts which were basically imaginary friends that everyone could see, and a hat that sang about Slytherin and also the other Houses that didn’t involve snakes and that I wasn’t as interested in, and a bunch of professors, and a lot of very long empty tables with older students sitting at them but with no food.

I double checked with Lysithea and she said we would get to eat after we were sorted into Houses, so I hoped the whole sorting thing was fast.

One by one, every first year walked up front as their name was called, and a professor who was named McGonagall put the hat on their head, and the hat shouted out a House. A pretty girl named Mercedes Black went to Hufflepuff, and a green-haired boy named Linhardt Bones went to Ravenclaw, and a tough-looking girl named Leonie Brocklehurst went to Gryffindor.

Students from each House cheered as everyone was sorted. I was surprised everyone wasn’t cheering for everyone, though. Every person sorted meant one step closer to the feast.

Some people got strange reactions though. For one, a girl named Dorothea Granger was sorted into Slytherin, but nobody cheered. She looked very pretty, and snakes were pretty too, so I thought she was a perfect fit. I clapped.

Ferdinand, Hubert, and Edelgard also all got odd reactions. When Ferdinand was sorted into Gryffindor, there was some confused murmuring, but also light clapping. When Hubert Goyle was sorted into Gryffindor, there were a lot of confused looks. When Edelgard was sorted into Gryffindor, there was a lot of murmuring, and everyone else at the Gryffindor table moved away from them. I thought that was very mean of them.

Lysithea didn’t get an odd reaction, but she got sorted into Slytherin, and that made me happy, because she was the first friend I made here, and now we would be in the same house.

Finally, though, it was my turn. I sat down on the stool, the professor put the hat on my head, and the hat began to talk to me. It said a lot of things about how I’d fit in each house, and how well each one would fit me, and a lot of other things, but I told it I liked snakes and wanted to be in Slytherin, and it asked me a lot of things about ambition and cunning and wit and I told it that I wanted to go and eat already and could you just put me in Slytherin and the hat said a lot of things about friends and being great and I told the hat I was hungry and I like snakes and really, it’s making this all out to be much more complicated than it has to and the hat laughed and said “Slytherin!” out loud so I could go and eat.

Everyone stared at me as I took off the hat and gave it back to the professor. The Gryffindors seemed especially shocked, looking between Edelgard and her friends and me. The Slytherins, on the other hand, slowly started to clap, and then the clapping grew louder, and I thought that the Slytherins seemed a whole lot nicer than the Gryffindors.

I sat down next to Dorothea, and across from Lysithea. Lysithea was already talking to, or maybe at Dorothea, but she stopped when I sat down. 

I introduced myself to her. Dorothea said, “I like your hair. It’s a really pretty color” 

I said, “I like yours. It’s really shiny, and so curly. Can I touch it?”

Dorothea said, “Okay,” and we became friends.

And then, finally, the last student was sorted, and the feast appeared, and I stopped thinking about school and weird magic things for a bit. There was food to eat.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Byleth gets a hug and talks about plants.

Nothing much else happened that night. I ate eight or nine plates of food, Lysithea heartily approved of the plateful of desserts, Dorothea asked me, “Where does it all go?”, and I didn’t really have an answer. 

We were led to our common room, where I spent a few minutes staring out the window at the bottom of the lake, watching the fish swim by. We had a professor named Snape as our head of house who flip-flopped between glaring at me and refusing to look in my direction as he gave his mini-speech. He also had a robe that seemed extra swooshy, like a cape instead of wizard clothes. Lysithea, Dorothea, and I decided to become roommates. 

They were a little surprised when I took my wooden sword out from under my robes as we got ready for bed, but didn’t ask me about it.

It was a little hard for me to fall asleep that night. The bed was weird and soft, and I didn’t like it, so I wound up laying down one of the comfier hides I’d packed on the floor and curled up in a blanket on top of that. Then I slept well.

Waking up was also weird, because there was no sunlight. What woke me up instead was Lysithea shaking me and saying, “Wake up, Byleth, you have to get ready for class!”

Dorothea came out of the bathroom with her hair up in a towel, and said, “Lysithea, we still have a while before class. Let Byleth sleep.”

Lysithea huffed. “She still hasn’t showered! And I wanted to talk to her about sleeping on the floor, that can’t be good for her.”

“The bed is too soft,” I said.

“Too soft?” Lysithea stared at me. “The mattress is hard as a rock!”

“Rocks are harder,” I said. “But I like those too. I’ve slept on them before.”

Dorothea said, “Byleth, what on earth were your parents like?”

“Imaginary,” I said.

Lysithea and Dorothea stared at each other. “So when you said last night that you didn’t eat this well in the woods...” Dorothea said.

“I ate a lot of meat and berries and stuff like that,” I said. “But sometimes it’d be hard getting a bunch of food for winter, so I’d have to eat less.”

Dorothea immediately wrapped me up in a hug. It was nice, even if I didn’t quite understand why she was doing it. It was just common sense to eat more when you had more and to eat less when you had less.

“Can you let go?” I asked, after some time had passed. “I want to practice with my sword a little this morning, and maybe take a bath in the lake."

Dorothea’s grip tightened. “In the lake?”

“Lakes are pretty, so if I take a bath in it, I’ll become pretty too,” I said.

“Byleth.” Lysithea said. “Don’t.”

“Don’t bathe?” I asked. “But then I’d be smelly.”

“She means don’t bathe in the lake!” Dorothea said, holding me at arm’s length. “Take a shower. We have a shower. You can use my shampoo.”

“Shampoo?” I asked.

By the time I got down to breakfast, my hair had been washed, shampooed, conditionered, and brushed. I thought it was a little much, and my hair was fine without all of that. I was also a little sad that I hadn’t had time to practice with my sword.

Still, Lysithea seemed excited about our first class today, Potions. She said our head of house taught it. I didn’t hear the rest of what she said because I was a little hungry and wanted to eat a light breakfast of three plates of eggs before class started, but she didn’t seem to mind. Once we were all done, we headed to class. Luckily, Lysithea seemed to know where she was going.

I thought the Potions classroom seemed very neat, if a little gloomy. I sat with Lysithea, and Dorothea sat at the table next to ours with a very loud Gryffindor boy with sky-blue hair named Caspar. He seemed very friendly, and much nicer than the older Gryffindors.

Dorothea smiled at him and he yelled about wanting to do Quidditch later and did she want to join and Dorothea said she would rather not. I asked what Quidditch was. This made Caspar exclaim, “You don’t know what Quidditch is?” loud enough that the whole room turned to look at me, and then the door opened and Professor Snape walked in.

He looked, if anything, even swooshier and capier than he had in the Common Room. He loomed for a moment, letting the class stare at him, and then he started talking.

Professor Snape spoke a lot about what Potions was and why it was neat, and then he turned to me.  “Potter!” he called, “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” 

I was happy when he asked, because while Lysithea didn’t have anything nice to say about the Potions textbook and in fact was already angrily glaring at Snape, the ingredients he’d mentioned had been things I saw in the herbology book.

I started talking, putting the pieces together as I did. Some bits of knowledge in my head were from things I learned while I was still living with my not-family, some were from the book, and some appeared by themselves, but they all fit together very nicely. “Asphodel, like the meadows in the Greek underworld. They have a lot of effects that are all kind of death-like, but if you powdered the root specifically then you want a sort of even, spread-out version of it, and something that’s specifically associated with earth, I think.”

Snape narrowed his eyes. I wasn’t sure why, I was pretty sure what I was saying made sense. All the information flowed easily for me, as though I’d learned something similar before.

“And the wormwood infusion, wormwood has a lot to do with consciousness. It’s used in alcoholic beverages, but it also has a lot of use in medical potions for things like memory recovery or anti-inflammatory effects. So if I put those two things together, I’d get a potion that would spread throughout a person’s consciousness to put them into a deep state of near-death, but would cause as few negative side effects as possible.”

“The potion’s name, Potter,” Snape growled.

I blinked. “I don’t know.”

“So you can remember an explanation for the recipe for the Draught of Living Death that happens to be nearly correct, but not it’s name?” Someone on the Gryffindor side of the room snickered.

“I read about the herbs,” I said, “I thought the rest just followed from that.”

Snape stared at me. A bunch of the other students also stared at me. Edelgard stared especially hard at me, like she was trying to figure out a really difficult math problem.

Finally, Snape moved on, and we started actually learning how to brew potions. Lysithea and I talked a lot about why each step was where it was and what it was. Dorothea and Caspar talked a lot about not making the potion fizz just because it’d be cool. Edelgard kept stealing glances at me.

It was a fun class.

**Author's Note:**

> No real plans for this one, just fun loose ideas, haha. I just enjoy writing in smol Byleth's voice, and the idea of Tom and Sothis interacting tickles me.


End file.
